


In the Space of a Thousand Breaths

by ChecktheHolonet



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Dirty Talk, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Mutual Masturbation, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 18:49:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13687650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChecktheHolonet/pseuds/ChecktheHolonet
Summary: “I think about that night,” she whispered, a bird with broken wings picking at the barren ground, looking for nourishment long departed. “I...feel your hands, sometimes...that moment when we touched…”All around them, the world slept, no one to witness this tragic ballet of desire and denial.





	In the Space of a Thousand Breaths

**Author's Note:**

  * For [articcat621](https://archiveofourown.org/users/articcat621/gifts).



> A little more than a year ago, I posted my first Reylo fic. Thank you to every one who has supported me since then through your comments, kudos and words of encouragement. It means the world to me. For @articcat621, who requested "something naughty involving the force bond." I hope you enjoy your gift. :)

 

Three months after Crait, and he still sees the look in her eyes. Reproach. Miserable, resigned disappointment. With the cool metal of his father’s dice clutched tightly in his hands, he had watched his father’s ship, his mother’s army, his uncle’s apprentice, disappear into the night sky, abandoning him to the salt-tinged earth of a planet long forgotten.

 

As he prowled the _Finalizer,_ he could feel the seething, roiling anger leech from Hux’s skin, a miasma of hatred that poisoned the air and stank of retribution. With the blood barely dried on Snoke’s throne room floor, the duplicitous general had already begun to make plans for a coup, gathering intelligence from First Order allies, planting the seeds of doubt into his newly-cemented Supreme Leadership.

 

Three months after Crait, and he was more tired than he ever had been. More lost. More alone. The light’s siren song was a phantom that haunted his footsteps, slinking in through the cracks named doubt to whisper tantalizing possibilities. Yet, he refused. _Let the past die_ , he had said. He'd been content to watch its funeral from the austere seclusion of his quarters.

 

He had fallen asleep in the rigid-back chair near the window, too stubborn, too tired to even bother with removing his clothing. _Creature comforts only appealed to the weak-minded_ , he’d been told as a boy, and as he’d devoted his life to the dark side, so too had he adopted its dogma.

 

When he opened his eyes, he was in another world, in a cozy room on a faraway planet draped in fog. _The bond_ , he thought immediately, at once curious and wary. Turning slowly, his eyes fell upon the single bed; widened at its only occupant. _Rey._ In the milk-pale light of the ethereal moon, her skin glowed silver against night’s rich backdrop. In repose, she appeared almost docile, her lips parted, a faint flush tingeing the smooth apples of her cheeks.

 

She was breathtaking, fiercely elegant in her understated beauty. A single perfect fruit on the vine, ripe and fit for his teeth to plunder, to sink into the soft, yielding flesh, spilling over his lips, across his tongue.

 

His hands trembled, the illicitness of his silent observation at once thrilling and shameful. He should turn his back, shut his eyes, do what he must to separate himself from temptation's quiet call. Yet, he found himself lurking in the shadows of her bedroom, seeming for all the world like an angel of darkness lured by the light’s unyielding pull. All around them, the world slept, no one to witness this tragic ballet of desire and denial.

 

His skin tingled, the heady cord of arousal tugging low in his belly, coiling like a snake poised to strike. With just a few quick steps, he could slither into her bed, twine his body around hers, draw warmth into the reptilian core of his aching heart. It would be so easy...

 

_Carnal diversions are for the weak._

 

Ren clenched his fists as the words leapt unbidden into his mind, the sinister timber of his master’s voice so real in memory he shuddered.

 

_“Is that the extent of your pathetic desires? A squishy wet place to bury that repulsive organ of yours?”_

 

_Ren flinched, bitter humiliation coloring his cheeks as he knelt before his master. Behind him, a young captain lay motionless on the ground, blood spilling from a single wound in her lovely chest. She was nude, somehow profane in her vulnerability even in death's merciful release._

 

_“I thought you were meant for greatness, young Solo. That your traitorous heart had been cured of this...affliction.”_

 

_Snoke’s grotesque face curled in a parody of a smile. “Perhaps you need the proper...motivation to redirect your focus.”_

 

_One by one, the Praetorian Guard stepped down from their posts, surrounding him with weapons drawn._

 

_“Let us practice the art of sublimation, young Solo,” Snoke said, eyes glittering as the guard advanced. “Begin.”_

 

_\--_

 

_He had lain on the ground for three hours after that lesson, body unable to move without agony, skin still tingling from the remnants of force lightning that had his master had dealt with impassive cruelty. Bitter, shameful tears dripped from his nose as he stared into the captain’s vacant eyes, the first young woman who had treated him with kindness since his he’d fled his uncle’s academy._

 

 _Bheta_ , he remembered with sudden clarity. He had called her Bheta, whispered it into the tender skin of her throat as moved gently inside her, taking shelter in the warm curves of her willing body. Called it in ecstasy as sweet, aching release flooded his troubled mind. Cried it in horror as his master had murdered her, inches behind where he knelt frozen, unable to move. Then Snoke had ripped her name from his mind, leaving him only with the haunting, perfect image of her face.

 

“Ben?”

 

Ren started, head snapping up as Rey’s voice broke his reverie. She was awake. _She could see him._ It wasn’t always the case, not even when he tried to control it. Since they’d parted on Crait the bond had worked fleetingly, connecting them only in times of duress, and only for the briefest of moments. She’d been there when he’d learned of his mother’s death. He’d hovered nearby when she visited the barren stretch of Jakku desert where her parents had been carelessly buried.

 

 _Why now?, h_ e wondered absently. _On a nameless, disposable night on some meaningless planet?_

 

“Ben,” Rey prompted, slowly sitting up in the darkness of the room. Behind her, the moon cast shadows over the flowing curves of her shoulders, the crown of her head, a halo of champagne light that gilded her supple skin.

 

_Beautiful._

 

It had been years since he’d had use for the word, had seen anything like it in his cloaked world of darkness. He’d forgotten what it felt like to gaze in awe, to feel humbled and blessed by beauty’s simple pleasure.

 

“You’re so lovely like this,” he breathed. The words slipped from his mouth unbidden, an offering laid without guile at her feet. He approached the bed slowly, sinking down to his knees, kneeling at her soul’s makeshift altar. With one trembling hand, he reached out to touch her, fingers extended, tracing where he should have been able to feel the smooth swoop of her slender collarbone. Instead, his fingers met nothing but the cool, damp air drifting in from the window. Ren’s hand fell, his face bowing as his fingers clenched. “All I ever…” his voice trailed off as he swallowed hard, his full lips pursing as he looked away.

 

“What is it, Ben?” Rey whispered. For once, she offered no rebuke, no reprimand over the First Order's latest carnage. No half-hearted bargain, no stilted negotiation. Just a simple question, loaded with subtext.

 

“I miss you.”

 

So effortless, surrender, when finally stripped of artifice. The confession slipped from his tongue like a bead of cool water, impossible to grasp in fingers tightly clenched.

 

A tiny, shallow breath was all that betrayed Rey’s surprise. She studied him carefully, her own fingers reaching to smooth across his brow, down the bridge of his nose, over the bow of his parted lips. With his eyes closed and his mind open to the sweet, low pulse of the Force between them, he almost believed he could feel it; the warm, slightly calloused pads of her fingers, the soft gusts of her breath.

 

“I haven’t missed anyone for the longest time,” he whispered. “I’d…” he swallowed, opening his eyes, feeling his face flame with heat, “thought I’d forgotten how. But...you…”

 

 _Yes._ It had been subtle at first, that sweetly pained ache that rested in the cavern where his heart had once throbbed. A fleeting memory of the look in her eyes. The soothing comfort of her voice in nights when his demons rose in a furious tide out of the blackness of his dreams. The way his mind sought hers, again and again, in moments of doubt, of solitude. Where he had once pursued darkness, had used his rage and fear as twin blades to carve his path to destiny, he now craved calm...the gentle balm of her presence, the soothing way her Force signature twined with his when they had connected. Alone at night on his narrow, stiff mattress, he'd dared to imagine what she might feel like in his arms, her warm breath drifting across his chest, his hands curved over her hips, his lips pressed to her hair as his fingers drifted over her skin.

 

“I missed you, too.”

 

Her admission, given so freely, almost seemed casual. She spoke with such gentle authority, such perfect clarity, that he thought for a single, fragile moment how easy it would be to simply follow wherever she bid. Cast aside the mantle of Supreme Leader and all that it entailed and let her lead him wherever she chose.

 

After so many years spent straining on a leash, Ben Solo no longer preferred freedom's terrifying ambiguity.

 

“Ben…”

 

“Don’t call me that.” He meant it as a warning. Instead, it fell flat between them, half-hearted and sad. Rey traced her fingers over the worn stitching on her blanket, her eyes misty; filled with sorrow. A thousand pounds of words unspoken crushed the air between them, and still he knelt, waiting, by her side.

 

“I will call you Ben because it’s your name,” she said finally. Her tone, though kind, bid no argument. “It’s who you are at your core, who you’ll always be. It’s…” she bit her lip, eyes darting away, and sighed. After a moment, she raised her hand, fingers splayed, palm out, and tentatively reached toward him.

 

“I think about that night,” she whispered, a bird with broken wings picking at the barren ground, looking for nourishment long departed. “I...feel your hands, sometimes...that moment when we touched…”

 

Ben shivered, a soft groan escaping his lips at the quiet longing in her voice. Heat, pure and undiluted, licked at his spine, even as he chastised himself for his thoughts’ betrayal.

 

Rey lowered her hand, blushing. Taking a short, fortifying breath, she raised her head and looked him square in the eye. “Do you, Ben? Do you ever think about how that felt?”

 

Suspended in that fragile moment, Ben could only answer with abject, brutal honesty. “Every night,” he murmured. “Every kriffing night, I dream about your skin...think about what it would feel like to…” He shuddered, letting the images play across the flickering screen in his mind. Rey’s mouth, warm and yielding under his own. Her hands, so delicate, tracing patterns in his hair. Her tongue, quick and clever, teasing over the deep grooves in his hips...tracing a trail to his aching cock, red and weeping at the tip. Her arms, wrapped tightly around his chest, as he moved inside her with deep, powerful thrusts, their skin gliding together in time’s oldest dance.

 

_“Oh…”_

 

Rey’s surprised gasp fueled his lust. The words began to flow without censure, an untamed flood finally free from restriction.

 

“I’d kiss you everywhere, lick you 'til you drip hot and wet for me...press inside until you can’t imagine what it feels like to be empty again...fuck.” He was panting, hands clenched, pulse racing, as his cock strained in the confines of his uniform. “Do you want that, sweetheart? Would you let me?”

 

On the bed, Rey shifted, her thighs rubbing together, a becoming flush painting the thin skin at the base of her throat. “Yes...I…”

 

Something dark and possessive flared at the sound of her voice, the way her eyelashes fluttered, the short and staggered breaths she took.

 

His eyes feasted on the modest curves of her breasts, the ripe and hardened tips just begging for his mouth to tease. “Then let me, dear one,” he coaxed.

 

“We can’t...you’re not…” She shifted, eyes darting toward his then flicking away, her fingers curled tight in the blanket. "You're so far away..."

 

“I’m right here,” he murmured, “right here.”

 

As he spoke it, he knew it as truth. He could feel her body's heat through the air in the room, hear her shallow, nervous breaths fill the silence between them, sense the heat of her gaze and the longing of her heart as clear and real as his own.

 

“I’ve never…”

 

That same dark and desperate core hidden away in Ben’s soul roared with triumph at her whispered words. He continued, low and soft, so beguiling, “I’ll talk you through it. Let me show you…”

 

Rey bit back a whine between sharp white teeth, the sandpaper edge of Ben’s voice coursing straight down to that aching place between her thighs.

 

“Let me make you feel good, Rey,” he begged, the throbbing, aching sensation of unfulfilled need becoming overwhelming. “Please…”

 

At last she nodded, drifting her hands over the curve of her ribs in invitation. “That’s it,” Ben said, low and soft, a bare whisper of sound. “Right there. Not too hard, not yet. Feel how smooth your skin is?”

 

Rey blushed, turning her face into the pillow. For all her power, all her drive, she had never had much time for self-exploration. Never imagined it would feel anything more than perfunctory, a way to scratch an itch...but this…

 

“Take off your top, sweet girl,” Ben murmured. “Let me see you.”

 

With only a moment’s hesitation, Rey swept her tunic over her head and gently undid the bands over her breasts. The air’s sharp chill felt unbearably erotic over the tightly-furled points of her nipples.

  
Beside her, Ben groaned. His right hand fumbled at the clasp of his trousers, freeing his straining cock. He dimly heard Rey’s gasp as he swiftly wrapped his hand around it, working his thumb at the tip roughly, spreading the pre-cum that wept from the tip.

 

“So hard for you,” he said roughly, “oh…” A few strokes later he forced himself to stop, focusing his attention on the bed where Rey continued to drift fingers up her side. “Your fingers,” he rasped. “Put them in your mouth.”

 

Rey yanked her gaze from Ben’s hand and shyly slipped two fingers into her mouth. Ben cursed, low and foul, as she did so, and something like pride bloomed in her chest as a triumphant smile crested her lips. Lazily, she worked her tongue over the the pads of her fingers, leaving them glistening as her eyes fluttered shut.

 

“Your tits,” Ben breathed, fierce and dark, “touch your tits.” Greed, a vicious creature with sharp fangs and claws, wedged itself deep in the pit of his stomach. He watched, enrapt, as Rey’s fingers slipped over the gentle rise of her breasts, leaving a glistening trail of moisture in their wake.

 

“I wanna bite them, sweetheart,” Ben groaned. “Not hard, just enough to sting, just enough to make you moan, just enough to make you _wet._ I’d tease those pretty nipples until you begged me to stop; I’d take them in my mouth, suck until they were swollen and sore and you ached for me...”

 

As his words cast their spell, Rey’s fingers squeezed down on the tender points of her nipples, a harsh moan rending the air as sensation threatened to overwhelm her. _So hot. So close._ From so little. It had never felt like this. Not ever.

 

“Ben,” she begged, hips grinding up in search of friction and finding nothing. “Ben, please…”

 

Ben’s hand returned to his cock, the head almost purple with need. It would only take a few strokes, just a few touches and he’d spill. But he forced himself to calm, to wait for her. To make it good.

 

“You’re doing so well, pretty girl,” he breathed. “So good for me. I’ll bet you’re soaked. Just dripping. Why don’t you feel for me? Slowly. Just a touch. Let me see you.”

 

Rey’s eager fingers dove down between her spread thighs, swiping through the sticky moisture that pooled from her core. She circled her fingers over her clit, rubbing frantically.

 

Ben trembled as he leaned over to watch, as he listened to the sound of her fingers sliding over her heated, swollen skin. If he closed his eyes, he could almost smell her, musky and damp, the ocean’s salt and the sky’s warm rain.

 

“Fuck, Rey,” he moaned, returning his hand to his cock. He could wait no longer, “put them inside you. Put them inside you like it’s me. Pretend it’s me...let it be me…”

 

His voice faded as he panted with the rhythm of his hand, eyes drawn to where she worked her fingers between her thighs, skin wet and glistening, perfectly pink and primed for him, yet so far out of reach he could cry. All around them, the force pulsed, electric tension almost palpable in the charged air. Her cries became high-pitched and frantic, formed in the shape of his name, sweet and desperate and pleading for him, until they broke in a stilted scream, her back arching and her toes curling as orgasm’s tide dragged her under. He felt it through every cell in his body, caught in her pleasure’s cresting storm. When it slowed to a gentle lull, his tenuous grip on his tight control snapped, his cock pulsing with pleasure so agonizingly sweet he saw nothing but black. Shouting, he surrendered, drowning in bliss.

 

When he opened his eyes, he was alone, the vast empty maw of space staring back at him through the transparisteel window of his own quarters. He stood on weakened legs, his head muzzy, still swimming with the echoes of his orgasm.

 

In his mind, he could still hear her voice, the glorious sound of his name on her lips. Grimacing, he shoved away his sticky clothing, barely able to meet his eyes in the mirror as he walked into the fresher to change.

 

As he stepped under the water, he heard it, barely audible over the water’s soothing whisper, but unmistakable in its familiarity:

 

“It will always be you, Ben. Always.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr: @checktheholonet


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